There is no excuse for Trump forcing taxpayers to pay for anyone to stay at one of his hotels. There are plenty of other hotels, which are run by independent parties, and which charge much lower rates. Government officials who need to stay in a hotel at taxpayer expense should use those hotels, not Trump’s.

Taxpayers billed $1,092 for an official’s two-night stay at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club

September 15, 2017

The bedroom suites at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, available only to members and their guests, feature hand-painted Moorish ceilings, antique Spanish-tiled mosaics and sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean.

On a weekend in early March, during one of seven trips by Trump and his White House entourage to the posh Palm Beach property since the inauguration, the government paid the Trump-owned club to reserve at least one bedroom for two nights.

The charge, according to a newly disclosed receipt reviewed by The Washington Post, was $1,092.

The amount was based on a per-night price of $546, which, according to the bill, was Mar-a-Lago’s “rack rate,” the hotel industry term for a standard, non-discounted price.

The receipt, which was obtained in recent days by the transparency advocacy group Property of the People and verified by The Post, offers one of the first concrete signs that Trump’s use of Mar-a-Lago as the “Winter White House” has resulted in taxpayer funds flowing directly into the coffers of his private business.

A Brooklyn councilman is accusing the city of flushing $2 million down the toilet while building a public restroom at a local park.

Democrat David Greenfield told WCBS-TV on Wednesday that it took him 7½ years to get City Hall to repair the formerly run-down Gravesend Park on 18th Avenue.

But the newly refurbished park became a pyrrhic victory for Greenfield when he learned it cost $2 million to build the new, 400-square-foot bathroom facility.

“I’m frustrated that we are essentially wasting taxpayer money,” Greenfield said. “You can build a complete house in six months for $1 million.”

He pointed blame directly at Mayor Bill de Blasio, explaining, “The buck stops with the administration and at the end of the day, if the administration really made this their priority, they could figure out a way to cut the red tape.”

Republican mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis also piled on the administration, saying the project was plagued by “mismanagement.

“You get a feeling in this administration that taxpayer money grows on trees,” she said.

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — San Francisco taxpayers could soon pay $190,000 in a lawsuit settlement with an undocumented immigrant who claimed he was reported to federal immigration authorities in violation of the city’s sanctuary city ordinance, the City Attorney’s office confirms to KPIX5.

The settlement is expected to be confirmed by San Francisco supervisors in future hearings.

Pedro Figueroa-Zarceno walked into the police station on December 2, 2015 to recover his stolen car.

When he left the station, he was immediately taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A document from federal immigration authorities released by his attorneys indicates that a San Francisco police officer directly contacted ICE and told them where to find Figueroa-Zarceno, the man’s attorneys and representatives said Wednesday.

The apparent incident, which led to the two-month detention of Figueroa-Zarceno, could be a violation of Sanctuary City policies placing limits on local law enforcement’s ability to cooperate with immigration officials, according to his attorneys.

Figueroa-Zarceno, a native of El Salvador with a fiancee who is a U.S. citizen and an eight-year-old daughter, was released Wednesday.

Speaking through an interpreter, Figueroa-Zarceno said that once he was at the station he was detained and handcuffed, and told that police needed to ask him questions. No questions were asked, but after a few minutes he was released out a side door, where an ICE agent was waiting outside to detain him.

“I could hear my daughter screaming outside the van, Dad! Dad!” he said. “I could hear her telling them not to take her dad.”

The city approved a Sanctuary City policy in 1989 prohibiting city officials from enforcing immigration laws in most cases as a way to encourage immigrant communities to trust and cooperate with police.

A second 2013 ordinance, Due Process for All, prohibits San Francisco law enforcement from detaining people on behalf of immigration authorities for deportation unless they are wanted for a serious crime.

Figueroa-Zarceno’s attorneys said the ICE document released Friday indicates that the sheriff’s department contacted ICE on Dec. 2 stating that a “final order fugitive” had been contacted by San Francisco police.

At the same time, the document states, a San Francisco police officer contacted the ICE duty officer directly and told him Figueroa-Zarceno was at the police station. He was taken into custody by ICE around half an hour later.

ICE officials confirmed the detention but would not comment on the documents released Friday.

Zachary Nightingale, Figueroa-Zarceno’s attorney, said the document shows that while he served two days for a DUI in 2012, there were no criminal warrants for Figueroa-Zarceno in the system, only a civil deportation order dating back to 2005.

A judge has since reopened Figueroa-Zarceno’s immigration case after finding that the initial order was given without proper notification, and a new hearing is now scheduled for 2019, Nightingale said.

Eileen Hirst, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department, said a warrant for Figueroa-Zarceno was found in a national criminal database when police ran his name through the system, and the sheriff’s department called ICE to confirm that warrant, as is routinely done with all warrants.

The department did not provide his location to immigration authorities during that call, she said.

Police Sgt. Michael Andraychak said in a statement Friday that then-Police Chief Greg Suhr had informed Mayor Ed Lee that Figueroa-Zarceno “never should have been taken into custody by ICE agents after being released from Southern Police Station.”

“It is the policy of the San Francisco Police Department to foster trust and cooperation with all people of the City and to encourage them to communicate with SFPD officers without fear of inquiry regarding their immigration status,” the statement said.

The department is investigating and if any violations of policies and procedures are found, “there will be serious consequences,” the statement said.

John Coté, a spokesman for the Office of San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said, “San Francisco has strong policies in place to encourage victims and witnesses to report crimes without fear of being deported, which include our sanctuary ordinance. These policies are designed to foster respect and trust between law enforcement and residents to ensure our communities are safe. The City, including the Police Department, remain committed to them.”

Coté said, “This proposed settlement is a fair resolution for all of the parties involved.”

Mayor Lee said he’d spoken with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about the case last week, and is “pleased” that Figueroa-Zarceno has been released.

Supervisor John Avalos said the incident was an illustration of how collaboration with immigration authorities can erode the trust between the community and local law enforcement.

It also highlighted the increased “politicization” of immigration during the election season, as seen in the national response last year to the fatal shooting of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant who had been released from custody a short time earlier.

In 2013, while veterans were dying due to lack of medical care, the Veterans Administration spent millions of dollars to install solar panels at its facility in Little Rock, Arkansas. Two years later, the panels were removed and reinstalled to accommodate a new parking garage. However, the panels were never turned on in either of these installations, because they were incompatible with the local electric grid.

The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday.

Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report.

In one stunning finding, the subcommittee said OneVoice even told the State Department’s top diplomat in Jerusalem of its plans in an email, but the official, Consul General Michael Ratney, claims never to have seen them.

He said he regularly deleted emails with large attachments — a striking violation of open-records laws for a department already reeling from former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s handling of official government records.

Mr. Netanyahu survived the election, and the U.S. spending was not deemed illegal because the State Department never put any conditions on the money. Investigators also said OneVoice didn’t turn explicitly political until days after the grant period ended.

“The State Department ignored warnings signs and funded a politically active group in a politically sensitive environment with inadequate safeguards,” said Sen. Rob Portman, chairman of the investigative subcommittee. “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East. American resources should be used to help our allies in the region, not undermine them.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said the Obama administration followed the law.

But she said their investigation exposed “deficiencies” in the State Department’s policies.

OneVoice had been politically active in Israel’s 2013 elections, which should have been a red flag to U.S. officials to put strict controls on how American taxpayers’ money was spent, the investigation said.

While it wouldn’t have necessarily disqualified the group, the State Department should have written a specific prohibition against using American money to influence a foreign election, the subcommittee said.

It’s part of a pattern of bad behavior at the State Department. The Government Accountability Office reviewed more than five dozen department grants and found officials cut corners and missed red flags in 80 percent of them.

The State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

In California, the government uses taxpayers’ money to pay a crossing guard to work in an area where pedestrians never actually cross the street, because there is an underground tunnel for them to cross. This job is a concession to unions.

One union member wanted to see how her mandatory union dues were being spent. There was a vote, strictly across party lines, against opening up the union’s books for people to see.

What is in those book that the Democrats are so afraid of letting people see?